Have you used social media strategies to support your public relations efforts? Are you struggling to show whether social made a difference?

This post will focus on six metrics you can use to measure the impact of social media on public relations (PR).

Why social media and PR?

As news outlets continue to boost their online presence, public relations professionals have a tremendous opportunity to leverage social media outlets to enhance their outreach efforts.

Social media networks like Twitter provide a new level of access to reporters that open dialogue in new and exciting ways. As social media sites become the “source” for news and breaking stories, marketers are seeing media coverage spread more rapidly than ever before.

Do you have many subgroups (or tribes) your business relies on? Have you figured out how to connect with these groups?

Some brands, like Wachovia, use a single corporate channel for all of their social media efforts. Other brands, like Kodak, created multiple corporate channels that are managed by individual business units.

Why Tribes?

As businesses look toward new opportunities to grow their presence, it may be time to reconsider your strategy about tribes and determine whether you’re truly delivering “value” to your followers.

Marketing segmentation offers an interesting opportunity to continue to grow your following while delivering highly targeted content that is relevant to your most profitable customer segments.

Some background

It’s important to understand the relationship among your lead generation strategies, your social media channels, your blog and your landing pages. Many times when we think of generating leads in social media, we look at the content we’re posting and neglect to look at the surrounding elements that also touch the user.

Every status update about a new blog post has three steps to drive lead generation: the status update, the blog post and the landing page. Each one of these has a different role in the process and offers a unique opportunity to optimize lead conversion. A typical lead conversion process in social media looks like the image below.

Are you prepared to put your customers in charge of your brand… literally?

What would happen if you gave your customers the keys to your corporate social media channels? This article reviews the rewards and the risks marketers face as they decide how much brand control they’re willing to give up.

Marketers are just coming to terms with how todeal with customers having free rein to either praise or bash their companies, but I think there may be a new trend on the horizon—thecustomer brand ambassador.

You have customers who love your brand and rave about it. But their reach only extends so far. Why not give them a platform to amplify their reach and spread the word? Think about it… It really could be a beautiful partnership.

Are you a marketer who’s trying to juggle social media with the rest of your team’s activities? Do you think social media should be at the top of your priorities, but you’re having a hard time proving it?

Don’t worry. You aren’t alone.

I fought this battle also, and in the end I realized that I needed to drop terms like followers, retweets and status updates from my discussions in executive meetings. It was a tough conclusion, but I realized those metrics didn’t tell executives what they wanted to know.

This article will share 7 tips for getting executive buy-in for social media.

Are you finding your social media efforts aren’t generating enough leads? Do the ones that come through “die on the vine”? This article will tell you why and what to do about it.

To fix the lead problem, you need to be able to easily identify where your “system” is breaking. There’s only one place to look for holes in your lead generation efforts: your sales funnel.

I faced this exact challenge and found that it wasn’t my strategies that weren’t delivering—it was the sales process that social media leads were being put through. Once I identified that, I worked on building a better sales process for social media leads.

Are you befuddled by all the social media tools out there? Are you wondering if Radian6 is a good choice for your organization? Do you need a way to compare different vendors? Keep reading for a comprehensive review…

If you’re looking for a social media monitoring tool, you’ve probably noticed that it’s quickly becoming a confusing landscape. For those who are new to social media and looking for tools to manage their presence, it’s difficult to know how to compare one vendor to the next. Here’s the skinny on where Radian6 fits into the picture.

Have you been wondering what’s so great about HootSuite’s new freemium model? Are you wondering if it’s worth the investment? Are you upset about having to pay for something that used to be free?

HootSuite just announced that they’ve passed their millionth user at the end of November, so it’s time to take a deep dive to see what HootSuite is doing and how it’s going to impact the social media space. Here’s a review of the latest and greatest with HootSuite’s new freemium service model.

Last fall, HootSuite announced that they were changing their business model to offer new “premium” services for business customers. All HootSuite users received a message asking them to choose a plan when they attempted to log in for the first time after the change.